


Stalemate

by potted_music



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anal Fisting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 17:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/pseuds/potted_music
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by this prompt @ dressing-room3: "I'd love to see a fic where Merlin and Harry (maybe all of kingsman) are werewolves, and also have a/b/o dynamics. Merlin being the lone omega and Harry has always looked out for him, perhaps purposefully resisting the urge to pursue him romantically out of respect. Until Merlin is writhing during a heat and begging Harry to mate him more than anything."</p><p>Except that I did not double-check the prompt until I was done, so this has the A/B/O component, but not the supernatural component *hangs head in shame* </p><p>It also contains an implied background dystopia, because where's the fun in not having an implied background dystopia?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalemate

**Author's Note:**

> You know those moments when you kind of space out, and only resurface after having commited ~2,500 words of A/B/O PWP? Bloody awkward, right?
> 
> Basically, I think reluctant A/B/O is a perfect metaphor for this fandom: on second thought, maybe you'd rather not spend so much time doing any of this, but it's not like you can help it, and you end up enjoying it XD So, hail Satan, etc.

When Harry saw the caller ID - a private encrypted line, never used except for emergencies - and heard Merlin’s strained voice, he was ready to mount a rescue mission and kill those that dared to hurt their staff magician, or to go save the world for the third time this week, or to destroy everything linking him to Kingsman and go deep underground. What he most certainly did not expect was _this_.

“But you are taking the pills,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know you are.”

Merlin has been on heat suppressants for as long as they knew each other. Harry knows, because back in the 1980s, when the pills were still illegal in the UK, he would smuggle them for Merlin back from missions abroad. At the time, Harry stood for omega emancipation as a matter of scandalizing polite society rather than out of any deep-seated belief, so, when he took Merlin on as his pet project, he did not expect it to turn into anything more, and did not notice when it did.

“I thought I was through with this,” Merlin’s growl is undercut by something low, and primal, and scared. “Had not had one in ten months. I thought it was over, and guess what.”

“It isn’t. Shit,” Harry says. “Tell me what you get these days, and I’ll leave it by your door. Can you reassign your missions yourself, or do you want me to go through the handlers’ list?”

“It started, there’s no way out of it other than through.” Merlin enunciates each word so clearly that, Harry realizes, even speaking takes effort. “Please. You are the only one I can trust. Much as I hate it. I’d rather it never came to this.”

“Can you put it more gentlemanly? Because that was impolite and inconsiderate, not to mention hurtful.” Harry presses his forehead against the cool windowpane to steel his racing thoughts.

“Harry, I know you’d rather not either, but I don’t, fuck, I don’t have anybody else.”

Harry knows from experience that it takes a lot for Merlin to start swearing. He remembers that one time when a nuclear submarine was about to wipe New York off the face of the earth; the other time was V-Day: after Harry came to after his coma, short an eye and several months of his life, he watched the footage from the bunker. 

“Don’t be so dramatic, it’s just a heat, not Armageddon. Everybody gets through it. I’ll be there in a second,” he says with a confidence that he does not feel, and hangs up.

All field agents - a group that tends to skew heavily towards alphas rather than betas - get receptor blockers as part of their emergency kit, should an omega in heat be sent to distract them from the assignment at hand. Harry rifles through his storage, and sprays a double dose up his nostrils. As he throws his head back and waits for the blocker to take effect, he tries to figure out how he feels about the whole situation.

There was a time, some twenty years in the past now, when he seriously considered offering Merlin mating. As Harry sat him, time and time again, through the aftereffects of heat suppressants overwriting his entire biochemistry, feeling his smell turn from the thrill of an omega on the cusp of heat to something sickly and dulled, he idly thought of all their could-have-beens. Even in those moments, he knew that Merlin fought too hard for his position in the organization to ever risk compromising it. Instead, they became, without noticing it at first, the best, or, more uncharitably, the only friends they had. Harry sniffs through the numbness in his nostrils, making sure that he got the dosage right, and decisively walks out of his room, knowing that he’d rather not worry about how their relationship will change if he cannot help it anyways.

Merlin does not open the door, not at once. Harry can hear the quiet shuffling on the other side, and he knocks again in their agreed code.

Of course, he’s seen Merlin naked before, back in the fun old days of illegal heat suppressants, curled up on himself and sweating bullets, but never like this, erect, slick smearing the insides of his thighs, his eyes wide and wild. Harry’s sense of smell might be dumbed down, but he can still sense the hunger and the urgency on him. If these are still the first days, and the heat is only starting to run its cycle, he’s so, so fucked.

“Right,” he says with a polite cough, and looks away. “Let’s treat this like a friendly exchange of favours. I owe you for when you told Auntie Cecilia that I was at a sensitive diplomatic assignment and thus could not attend her gala.”

Merlin nods, and leads the way. He does not let Harry in past the living room, and this concern for his privacy is incongruously funny, given why Harry’s there to begin with. Harry loosens his tie, grateful for receptor blockers.

“I can still wait,” Merlin rasps, “let’s wait till I absolutely cannot.”

They settle for playing chess, like in the good old days when Merlin was heavily medicated, and Harry, as he finally dares to admit from the vantage point of two decades, maybe just the slightest bit lovesick. Harry does not comment on the fact that Merlin’s sitting on his palm, and from the way his arm twitches, Harry can guess the rest: those strong fingers prodding the itching hole open, scrabbling at the rim that is probably not even that swollen yet, trying to quench the urge that overrides his rational reactions. He tries not to look, and feels ashamed when he fails, feels a pang of guilt for taking sick pleasure in the man he unconditionally respects debasing himself. It’s not even Merlin fingering himself that lets Harry know it’s _bad_ : it’s the fact that Merlin loses. He’s a much stronger player of the two, and it’s usually only a stalemate when he feels that Harry needs some cheering up, so Harry’s thrown when he wins in 17 moves.

“This is not me,” Merlin says, settling on the sofa.

“Except it is,” and, when he sees Merlin wince, Harry quickly adds, “not all of you, of course.”

“Right,” Merlin says, “please.”

Harry takes his time rolling up his sleeves, and by the time he looks up at Merlin again, the man is slouched on the sofa, legs spread, three fingers pistoning in and out of his arse, but his chin is jutted out angrily, like he still cannot get over the fact that his body let him down so.

“Let’s start with fingers, and maybe that will suffice,” Harry says, “I heard it might, the fingers combined with the smell of an alpha, especially for older omegas-”

A whine escapes Merlin’s lips. Harry brought some lube, but it’s not like he’ll need it, not judging by the way Merlin’s thighs are glistening with slick, not judging by the way his own fingers glide in effortlessly. Harry looks away guiltily, and takes another dose of blockers.

A fat load of good they do him, of course. He might not be high on the omega scent, but he’s a hot-blooded alpha regardless, and it takes all his willpower not to mount his friend, the man who saved his life more times than he can count, as he settles behind him on the sofa and nudges one of his legs forward to give him better access.

He starts with two fingers, overwhelmed with how easily they slide in past the muscles that yield and quiver at the touch. He pushes in several times anyway, reveling in the heat of wet flesh, in the way Merlin clamps on him, until the man turns his head and growls, “More.”

Harry’s hips buck against his will. “I want your cock,” Merlin says, his eyes glassy with decades of suppressed hunger.

Harry believes he deserves a fucking BAFTA for the way he firmly says, “That there is not you talking.”

He rams three fingers into Merlin’s arse, not meeting much resistance still, and moves his wrist around, trying to locate his prostate. “I want, I need, Harry, please, now,” Merlin babbles, and at that, something twists in Harry’s chest, pity and lust intertwined. When he hits the spot at last, Merlin finally shuts up, throws his head back with a howl. Harry keeps jabbing at it, not caring if he’s being too rough, if there’s more pain than sated need in Merlin’s ragged moans. He tries to spread his fingers a bit, and is startled by how easily the muscles give.

Merlin tries to turn over, boneless and awkward around Harry’s fingers, propping himself up on elbows and knees in the essential pose of submission. “Harry, please, fuck me, knot me, Harry, I want that, I want you.”

Harry grinds the heel of his hand against his own erection, and bites his lip. They will regret this later, Kingsman will regret this later. He has no idea how they’ll be able to function if the head of the organization and the chief magician cannot look each other in the eye. He pulls away minutely, and then spears four fingers into Merlin’s hole, up to the knuckles in one sweep motion. This makes Merlin arch his back, his mouth gaping in a silent scream. Harry frantically unbuttons his own trousers with his one free hand, grasps firmly at the base of his cock to not come right there and then. A sickly curiosity of a hunter is overtaking him. How much will Merlin take? How much can Merlin take? He presses his fingers in farther, his thumb bent to his palm.

As Merlin keens, stretched over his knuckles, and leans forward, away from him, instead of rocking onto his fingers the way he was doing before, Harry decides that that’s it, that’s the limit, Merlin’s abused red hole cannot accommodate more, puffy and not even trying to clench around him anymore. That’s it, he thinks, and pushes in deeper, holding Merlin’s hips in place with his other hand, not allowing him to escape. With more pressure than would be comfortable, his fist is rammed into the slick heat, so tight around him that his bones ache. He stills as Merlin thrashes around him with a hoarse cry, tremors passing through his whole body, and then he just buries his face in his arms as he wiggles his arse a little bit.

Harry’s mesmerized by the rim, impossibly stretched around his wrist. As he leans forward to lick at it, his wrist jerks, and Merlin’s knees give under him. He’s not even moaning anymore, just breathing heavily through clenched teeth. Harry laps at the hole with short brushes of his tongue, pushing just a little bit, probing if there’s any give at all, the heat and crush of the muscles is impossible, and he feels Merlin’s pulse reverberate through him like a second heartbeat.

They stay like that for a time that seems impossibly, cruelly long, Harry occasionally twisting his wrist slightly, Merlin trying to rut at the sofa, only to be jerked back to reality by the stretch of his hole over Harry’s fist. Harry’s wrist starts cramping; a while back, he came without touching himself - something that never happened since his teenage years - and, for once, he is grateful for the longer refractory period that came with age. Merlin goes completely still, and Harry, worried at first, realizes with a start that the man had dozed off, still pulled tight over Harry’s fist. He runs his palm over Merlin’s long backbone, not touching so as not to disturb him, but savouring the warmth of his body from a distance.

They could have had this all these years, he thinks, listening to Merlin’s even breathing. Except that they could not, not under other Arthurs, not under different laws, not in any other times, but he is willing to fight whoever tries to take this from him tooth and claw.

Merlin stirs, moans at the reminder that there’s a fist lodged firmly inside him, and wakes up. His voice is hoarse from screaming, barely more than a broken whisper, yet he rasps, “More. Harry. Please,” like his world is collapsed to just those three words, and the thirst that he cannot quench otherwise. And Harry might be a gentleman and a rational man, or at least more rational than most would give him credit for, but he is also human, and this he cannot take. Twisting his wrist to the side, he slowly pulls it out, trying to be gentle. Merlin whimpers and clenches around the emptiness a couple of times, but then, without giving him time to reconsider, or without giving himself time to think it over, Harry pushes in.

He thrusts in and in, inch by inch, until his balls are flush against Merlin’s arse and he cannot push any deeper, and then he just keeps grinding, rocking helplessly, wanting more. He feels flayed and vulnerable with the overpowering desire, he awkwardly pats at Merlin’s sweaty ribs, and then withdraws almost completely, only to ram back in, pushing Merlin up the sofa. They establish a rhythm, him thrusting and Merlin grinding back against him, mating and merging, and even this no longer feels like enough. Harry scratches at Merlin’s back, wanting _in_ , wanting to scrape him raw, to destroy the barriers between them; he leans forward and bites down on his shoulder, his teeth breaking skin, and as Merlin squirms around him and yelps, he pushes in one last time, and comes, the world fading into luminous emptiness.

He comes to when his knot is already more than half-formed; he read Merlin’s files and knows about his life before Kingsman, knows for a fact that this is not his first knotting - the thought makes him irrationally angry - and yet, it’s been years, and Merlin’s wincing uncomfortably under him. Harry reaches over and covers Merlin’s still hard cock with his palm.

With a grateful whimper, Merlin pushes into his fingers, and Harry adjusts his grip. At this point in the heat, Harry knows, Merlin’s hypersensitive, so his fingers glide over the head of his cock rather than tug, a ghost of a touch rather than an actual caress. 

“I know we couldn’t, but I’m still sorry we didn’t earlier,” he whispers, already regretting it the moment the words escape his mouth. “I can be sorry, I have the right to.”

Merlin turns his head and blindly offers the corner of his mouth for a kiss. Harry closes his eyes. They are smart, and they will figure something out.


End file.
